Charter Security Suite will not install even after they removed my existing antivirus

Question

This is important to me because I am a quadriplegic who relies on my laptop to connect me to the world outside my bed aND MY SMART TV for entertainment.I tried unsuccessfully to load Charter Security Suite,  I then contacted Charter tech support on 7/30 who took me through gotoassist - He confirmed that I had no existing antivirus on my laptop. He took down my firewall and again was unsuccessful at downloading Charter Security Suite. After that time I get a warning my computer has no antivirus and my windows 7 computer is unable to get automatic updates. He told me he would report the problem and I could expect a call from 24 to 72 hours from F-SECURE.I did not receive the promised call. i don't know if he did something to my computer that made anything better, but my situation is definitely worse after uninstalluing the working version of macafee. But I am really worried after he said, "It is not a real big deal, just don't go to any weird websites!" Now that I am vulnerable, i AM VERY CONCERNED AND HAVE NOT HEARD FROM F-SECURE ABOUT RESOLVING MY ISSUES AND SUBSEQUENT CHARTER TECH SUPPORT CALLS HAVE NOT RESOLVED MY ISSUES. ps - I'm getting two red flag notices since 7/30 - one regarding my lack of antivirus, and one telling me windows could not automatically check for updates! HELPDaniel.

Answer 1

Hi Daniel, Sorry you're having hassle with this.  I'm not familiar with the Charter Suite, but I assume from what you've said, it's a rebranding of F-Secure, so the advice I am suggesting below is based on that premise. The guy who said it's "not a big deal" having no anti virus was probably just trying to put your mind at rest, but in essence, he does have a point that if you stick to known safe websites, don't open any unexpected email attachments, and don't click on any popups, banner ads, or anything else which may look suspect, you should be fairly safe, as viruses don't tend to just appear out of nowhere, without any interaction from the user.  That said, while this issue is ongoing, I would suggest that you download Malwarebytes and have that running as a backup.  This is compatible with F-Secure so shouldn't cause any further installation issues, and will hopefully give you some piece of mind. The next thing I would suggest is to download and run the full McAfee uninstaller, which you should find linked to on this page of Uninstallation Tools. Once you have run the tool, then run the F-Secure Uninstallation Tool to fully remove any part installations of F-Secure, and try your installation again. As I said, the above is based on the assumption that Charter is the same as F-Secure in all but name - if this is incorrect, then I apologise in advance for any mis-information, but I don't think any of the above will do any additional harm to your computer. Let us know how you get on.